Posted
by
Soulskill
on Saturday July 18, 2009 @12:23AM
from the paging-stevie-ray-vaughan's-ghost dept.

Bakkster writes "Independent artists will be able to use the XNA Creator's Club to produce the Rock Band note-charts for their music and sell them in game later this year. Bands will use their original song masters and generate a MIDI file that produces the game 'gems' to which players can follow along. Tracks must pass a review process with other XNA members, and then a final approval from MTV Games. Songs will be sold for between 50 cents and $3, with the artist getting a 30% cut after MTV and Microsoft take their cut. The best tracks will also make their way to the Wii and PS3 after a 30-day exclusive period."

TFA is a little more clear than the summary. The artist get 30% of the sales, not anything more complicated. Of course there's a $100 per year fee to be in the XBL Marketplace in the first place. So iTunes requires less work, and pays more money (70%)...

TFA claims that the more exclusive XBL means each artist is more likely to be noticed, but ignores the fact that each artist is also more likely to be flat-out rejected after all their hard work. So I guess it's like buying a $100 dollar lottery ticket, one with a low payout and a low chance of winning.

Like I said, I don't have a problem with a simple delay. If Microsoft has the best system for developing content, and/or Harmonix got the best deal with them, fine, give them a limited(!) period of exclusivity. But here's what I have a problem with:

Tracks for the Rock Band Network will be made available later in the fall on the Xbox 360® video game entertainment system from Microsoft. Stand out tracks will follow on the PLAYSTATION®3 computer entertainment system and Wii(TM) console. (press release [rockband.com])

I believe the community you were referring to is other song creators, not the public at large, and the wiki page's [rockband.com] mention of peer review would tend to reinforce that. It seems reasonable to me that songs that are effectively in beta testing aren't publicly available. Rereading the press release with the peer review in mind, it's possible that by "stand out tracks" they meant "tracks that passed review", but that's not clearly spelled out in the press release, and the other platforms aren't mentioned at all on the wiki.